


and the weather will change

by lyricalecho



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: BIG OL EP 59 SPOILOS, Flashback, Gen, ONE OF THOSE TAGS IS ALREADY A SPOILER, also two very mentally ill characters briefly using ableist language to refer to themselves, and a tiny bit of blood, brief references to taako's highly unpleasant childhood, episode 59 spoilers, sibs fic, thats it i think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 01:38:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10583724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricalecho/pseuds/lyricalecho
Summary: Taako and Lup have always had an exit strategy. They just don't exactly have a Plan B.





	

**Author's Note:**

> HEY ALL this is.............. not the fic ive been working on for months, whoops, this is an idea i had four days ago that i had to get out so i could focus on ANYTHING ELSE, AT ALL, and y'all get it bc i wrote non-au taz fic for once in my goddamn life. i spent a lot of time trying to keep things Deliberately Vague to avoid getting jossed but it's definitely all getting jossed this week anyway so idk why i bothered??? it's 2017. everybody's jossed, bitch. let's get you some fruit.
> 
> title is from rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead because im insufferable, i HAD a normal title but i couldnt go thru w it, and also YOU try rereading r&g in a post ep-59 world and not dying over it. anyways. heres sibs.

"We should have a word," Lup says, as Taako tosses apples down to her from the branch where he's perched; between caravans is always touch and go, but this much should last them at least to the next town over, and they can find something new there. They always do. 

"A word, like, a conversation?" He clears out the last few and drops down, swinging back and forth a little on the branch before hitting the ground. A little showy, but she doesn't react.

"No," says Lup, "I mean, like - like a code word, for us, if anything goes bad, and we can say it and we'll know that means we need to bounce."

"Bad how?" Taako grabs one of the apples from her bag and bites into it. 

"You know," she says, a little sternly. 

He does, of course. He doesn't need to ask and she doesn't need to answer, the same way they probably don't need any words at all to know when one of them wants out - but if Lup wants her undercover bullshit, he's not going to deny it. 

"What's the word, then?" he says, tossing her the apple. 

She leans back against the tree and takes a bite. "You pick."

He falls back onto the grass, going silent for long enough that Lup starts tossing the apple impatiently from hand to hand, and finally says, "...Sauté."

"You _dweeb_." She flicks a seed at him. 

He scowls back. "Well, I can't make it something I wouldn't actually say."

"Ugh, I know," she says, flopping down next to him and propping her legs up on his stomach. "I just hoped it would be something cool, like - _engage operation raptor_ , or something - "

"Oh, _I'm_ the dweeb, you _lunatic_  - "

"But, okay, fine," she says. "Sauté. And that's a blood pact, alright - we say that, and we get gone, no questions asked. Right? Even if one of us thinks it's going okay - the other one says that and we go."

"Okay," Taako agrees, and they both nod, satisfied.

When somebody looks at one of them with something like hunger; when somebody starts to cotton to something they filched; when somebody reminds them too much of the unspoken and long-past _before_ ; when they feel themselves wanting to stay enough that abandonment would hurt like a severing: "Sauté for dinner?" asked with false cheer as they're going through their bags, and both of them gone by nightfall. Taako starts to understand - less about needing a word to tell when something's wrong, more about having _anything_ to say besides the damning, insurmountable, "I'm scared."

And then IPRE finds them. 

And it's... different, for sure, than anything else they've done, but people are people, and both of them learned that too early to expect much from anybody. A place to breathe, a job to do, folks with the power and muscle and resources to keep them alive for longer than they could themselves; they can stay until these weirdos start asking too much of them, and then - they both know the drill. 

A month passes. Another. Barry looks at Lup like no one has ever looked at either of them, awestruck and yearning; Magnus and Merle sit down next to Taako one day and start telling him their life stories, and then refuse to leave. 

"You're staring," he points out to Lup over dinner (and they haven't rationed themselves in so long, keep needing to remind themselves how) and he nods his head sideways in Barry's direction, as Lup tugs on her hair. 

"You're smiling," she retorts, and he bites at his lip, mirrored habits. 

They both know what they should be asking. Neither of them does. Months; months; months. 

IPRE finds them. Something else finds IPRE. 

"Lup!" They are stranded, scattered, surrounded and near-swallowed by the furious darkness none of them can truly name - and Taako cannot find his sister. " _Lup_!"

"Taako!" she calls back, emerging, impossibly, from the other side of the outcropping, and they collide with each other like asteroids. 

"Fuck," he says, as soon as they break apart. " _Fuck_ , Lup, I thought - " 

"I know," she says, disheveled but only with minor injuries, same as him; they can't take a hit but they can sure as hell avoid one. 

"Well, if ever a time was sauté-o-clock it's probably right fucking now," says Taako. "We need to go, I can - I can probably pilot one of the pods, right, it's just pulling a lever at the right time, we just need to - "

Lup doesn't answer him, looking back towards the rushing gale of monsters - they're out of sight now but they have seconds, maybe less - towards where the others are almost certainly dead by now, towards Barry. 

"Lup," says Taako, and she looks back to him, desperate. "We can't fight them." He doesn't need to tell her that. It shouldn't even be a discussion. 

A year ago it wouldn't have been. 

"We can't," she agrees, and looks back out and then meets Taako's eyes. "...If you say it, and you mean it - like for real mean it - then we go."

She doesn't have the answer any more than he does, but both of them know where this goes; if they stay the unthinkable happens, one way or another. If they start thinking about other people the way they think about each other, then there's no going back. They've always known this. 

She waits. 

"...Back here in ten minutes," says Taako, and she nods, and both of them take off in opposite directions. 

He sprints away from his sister, into a writhing cloud of monsters, every lesson he's ever taught himself screaming at him to turn back, and flying nearly blind he finds -

"Magnus!" Taako yells, and the dozen figures Magnus is slashing at turn in Taako's direction. "Fuck," he hisses, fumbling to shoot off a fireball, as Magnus looks dumbstruck. 

"What are you _doing_ ," he shouts, a little ungratefully given the whole emotional odyssey Taako is currently undergoing, but he does take out another two or three creatures between them as he says it. 

"Well," Taako pants, "my sister's crazy, I'm an idiot, you're an asshole, and we are sautéing the fuck _out_ of this bitch, _where's Merle_."

"I - I don't know," Magnus says, and up closer Taako realizes he looks in very bad shape. "I don't know where anyone is, I was with Lucretia but we - " 

_Lucretia_. Taako squeezes his eyes shut. Magnus is a lost cause, but someone here has to remember how to prioritize. Something happening to Lup is unallowable; something happening to the two dipsticks who might be his best friends is possible but alarming; if he expands beyond that, now, they're all doomed. 

(Barry, beaming as he says, "she's told me a lot about you;" Lucretia, pages spread in front of her as she unblinkingly fields Taako's fervent questions about magic; Davenport, all calm forthrightness, telling him the two of them will always have a place there. He breathes in sharp.)

"Magnus," he says, taking out another two as he slings Magnus's arm over his shoulder. "Magnus, look at me, okay?" There's a cut, deep, over Magnus's eye, and Taako flinches. "Woof, alright," he continues. "Now stop looking at me because your face is a grim mask of death."

Magnus laughs, at that, coughing up blood as he does; Taako feels a stab of terror, and hates himself for it. "Here's what's up," he says. "We have eight minutes and forty-three seconds to find Merle and - and whoever else we can, and then I'm outie. I'm out of monster hell."

"We're sautéing?" Magnus suggests. 

"We are sautéing, my dude," says Taako. "Come on."

They do all make it, somehow, which is impossible but not surprising, given the faceless luck that's somehow buoyed the seven of them before now. It doesn't matter; not really. Not losing anyone now just means it'll be worse later when they do, or when things fall apart. Something will end, and they've made their choice, and both of them will have to feel it. 

Lup finds him, sitting against the wall in one of the halls of the ship, and slides down to sit next to him. Neither of them mentions how long they were apart, back there, not like they'd need to - it's odd and raw, still, thinking about it. 

"...We should have left at the beginning," says Taako. "When we had the chance."

"We should have," she agrees. "But you're crazy and I'm an idiot, so."

"Except when it's the other way around."

"Except when it's the other way around." She shifts a little, and moves to rest her head on his shoulder. "...What's our word that means 'stay'?"

"I don't know if we had one," says Taako.

"Good." He feels her exhale, settle just a little deeper; this, the only kind of touch that's ever eased them. "That means we never have to say it."

(He's not sure why, later, it rings so true when Magnus asks him to pick the code word, not sure why the thing that comes unbidden is _sauté_ or why Magnus and Merle both nod to this, unsurprised. There's something urging him, not quite a voice but something deeper, farther away and longer-buried - it's the same pressing need that speaks to him as Magnus falls and Taako dives blind after, grasps at Merle pulling back at them both, like a song he knew or a dream he had, telling him, over and over, _stay, stay, stay_.

He can; he will; he does.)


End file.
